I just looked, and realized that the non-honeycomb sandwich products are not yet shown on our website. We have a number of such products that we have been developing and testing with major aerospace companies for quite a few years, and are just about to start producing our first full-scale product samples.

CPDick, thanks for that information. We focused on structural and interior component materials for this feature, not engines, but that's good input. It's especially interesting that temperatures are outpacing titanium. Can you give us your company name for possible followup?

I saw no mention of cellular steel (superalloy) products. Inside and near turbine engines, the temperatures are too high for most of the materials mentioned. In fact the temperatures seem to be rising, to the point that many parts that were traditionally made of titanium alloys are failing. For quite a few years, we've been working both on traditional superalloy honeycomb and on other brazed cellular structures that can replace titanium and withstand much higher temperatures, and yet be weight-neutral or even weight-saving.

Beth, I also found it enlightening to discover the mix of materials being developed for, and used in, in bleeding-edge aircraft design. But composites are, in fact, a big part of all this, so it's not all hype. It was a big surprise, and encouraging, to see that sustainability concerns are finally reaching and influencing this industry, like so many others.

Very comprehensive overview of the state of materials exploration in the aerospace industry. It was interesting to me that companies don't see composites as the be-all, end-all solution--a surprise given that so much attention and hype is focused on their deployment. I was also pleased to see that companies are keeping somewhat of a watchful eye on sustainability concerns as they vet out these new materials.

A few weeks ago, Ford Motor Co. quietly announced that it was rolling out a new wrinkle to the powerful safety feature called stability control, adding even more lifesaving potential to a technology that has already been very successful.

It won't be too much longer and hardware design, as we used to know it, will be remembered alongside the slide rule and the Karnaugh map. You will need to move beyond those familiar bits and bytes into the new world of software centric design.

People who want to take advantage of solar energy in their homes no longer need to install a bolt-on solar-panel system atop their houses -- they can integrate solar-energy-harvesting shingles directing into an existing or new roof instead.

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